Databases Index

link button: The Perl Camel is a trademark of O'Reilly & Associates

We created this page to make it easy for you to browse or share notes at one of our Summitlake.com interactive forums. By any other name, any kind of chat room, forum, bulletin board or text collection has always been a "database" -- really, just an organized collection of text and images, through which you can navigate (or post an update) quickly and conveniently.

Please do remember that any entry you leave on a database is viewable by others!

We encourage you to write us about these ideas. You can post brief comments in the Guest Log, Chat Board, or Computers forum. Of course, you can still email us directly. We hope you're as excited about the possibilities of this as we are. Enjoy!

We've talked about it enough. Now, we're proud to introduce our flat-file database engine, "Megadb". Over three months in development, this is over 40K of Perl scripting that allows SummitLake.com users to search or browse our own databases for information. Like other online and offline databases, you can enter the text or "selection criteria" you wish to search for, and only those records matching your request are returned to you.

Your database is also "interactive" -- for the first time, you can add content to SummitLake.com. If your browser accepts cookies, you can add your own record entries, modify them, or even delete them. Some of our databases support user entries, and some don't. Note that you may modify or delete only records you created yourself.

If you see an "Insert" (add) button on the database front page, you have update privileges. If you don't, but you do see a "Prefs" button, click it to add user preferences for background, text color and so forth. If you still don't see an "Insert" button, and you don't see the notice "This database is designed for Search only" in the message text box, then either your browser doesn't accept cookies, or please drop us a line so we can look into it further.

"Flat file" record format means our databases are simple, and generally small. We won't be putting Oracle out of business any time soon. "Megadb" gets its name from "Megaliths", the textbook example that launched us on our own database project. We've included it on the site in case you want to learn something about the megaliths of the ancient Britons, such as Stonehenge, but you can also add test entries of your own.

At this writing (March 2001) the database is still in "Beta"; we've moved it online for public test and comment. You may find things you like, including some features not available in shareware and freeware "flat file" databases I've seen. You may also find things that don't work, or don't work as expected, or that you just think should work differently. Please feel free to let us know, exchange ideas, or register your opinion.

Perl is an ideal programming language for text processing, and a flat-file Perl database for much larger projects, such as our Quotes collection, is in the works.

We think guest logs for more heavily traveled departments makes perfect sense, such as for Writing, Computers and La Parola. If you want to add a comment without introducing yourself and composing a book, a database form screen is the perfect place for that. If you want to browse what others have posted about, say, hard drives and backups in Computers, again, a database search form is a great way to find just the information you're currently looking for.

A database is the ideal storehouse for larger collections of smaller pieces of information -- the kind that would never warrant writing or serving up an entire web page! Send us your ideas!

Our databases readily lend themselves to spreadsheets and tables that warehouse small bits of information in many columns and rows (data), such as catalogs, lists, logs, dictionaries, and collections. You can export an Excel spreadsheet to a perfectly usable text file table or database in less than two minutes!

Bookmarks and URL's: you can bookmark any database in your browser, but what you are storing is the address to the database program, not to a page. There are no pages to index, or "working pages" to save for offline viewing. The HTML that you view as a page is generated "on the fly" by the program. Consequently, that page only exists for the period of time that you are viewing it.

How Addressing Works: Observant users who like to type URL's directly into the browser will note that the URL to the program is always the same. It is followed by a question-mark and the nickname of the database data to be viewed. Thus,

all use the same database program to work with the Guest Log, Megaliths and Bear Registry databases, respectively.

Privacy: Not that there's any way for you to leave sensitive data on this site anyway, but no data on this site is ever shared with others, sold, mined or otherwise used to compromise your visit. Databases that offer guest update privileges (Guest Log, Megaliths) uses cookies to keep track of the "owner id" for records you create, meaning, others can't change or delete your entry. We don't use cookies to "track" your browsing habits. (Sites that do are wasting money reading tea leaves, in our opinion, when they should be spending it on better content for their customers!)

Security: any data you can post to our databases is in full public view by anyone with a browser. It should go without saying, DON'T post your credit card number (we don't want it anyway), or other data you don't want others to see. We've taken reasonable steps to protect the data integrity of anything you post on this site, including the built-in standard that only you can change or remove data originally entered by you. But SummitLake.com is neither responsible nor liable for loss, damage, or abuse by others, of data posted by you.

"Safe Space": We respect free speech and intellectual property. Others may own ideas posted on this site, but we own the data. SummitLake.com reserves the right to decide when and if content posted on this site is abusive, threatening or otherwise inappropriate for this site. While we can't please everybody, our intent is to be a gracious host to as many guests as possible. For further information, please see HELP in any of the databases.